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Burma’s Kachin people have suffered enormously at the hands of their own government in an ongoing conflict which has worsened in recent months. After military attacks and occupation, thousands of displaced people have been forced from Zai Awng camp and are now struggling in a hastily constructed settlement in northern Kachin.

We are currently the only international organisation working with this forgotten community in the remote mountain camps. Our Asia Regional Manager, John Littleton visited this extremely hard-to-reach area of Burma in April 2017 and found that the situation has changed drastically, with many children now in increasingly desperate need of support.

However, the intensified conflict in recent months, including air attacks and shelling has made these camps increasingly unsafe. Thousands of people were forced to flee Zai Awng late last year, looking for refuge over the border in China, only to be met with beatings and forced back, before fleeing again to stay safe. They hid in the jungle until troops withdrew. Some returned to the old camp but were not seen again, so the remaining 2,000 people built a new camp and called it Sha It Yang. This terrified and traumatised community have nowhere left to run, and are living in appalling conditions with little food and no clean water.

Three teachers from our Centre in the original camp in Zai Awng have remained with the community and re-built a safe space for children in Sha It Yang. They have set up two classes but there is need for another four.

Children are in desperate need of support after what they have been through, with teachers reporting that the even Chinese New Year firecrackers heard across the border are now terrifying for them. One teacher said, “We are doing the best we can, but naturally the children are quieter, less active and less able to be engaged and creative. The wider community is so tired of the fighting, they just want to go home, and they don’t understand why the world isn’t paying attention”.

In the northern camps of Kachin state there is not a single other international organisation offering ongoing support to children. As the area remains an active war zone, access to the camps is difficult. Aid agencies sporadically operate in the central government controlled regions of Kachin State, but leave when the operating environment becomes too difficult.

We are appealing for donations to ensure we can both maintain and expand our work here, to meet the escalating need in the new camp.

If you are unable to support the work here financially, please share this blog where you can to direct attention to a terrified group of civilians, currently forgotten by the international community, yet in need of critical help.

​Few people are aware that the India-Nepal border is one of the largest corridors for human trafficking on the planet. While the outside world pays little notice, the problem has reached endemic proportions with an estimate of nearly 200,000 Nepalis having already been trafficked into India.

The vast majority of these victims are women and children who are subjected to forced labour, prostitution, and sexual abuse. The porous, 400-mile-long border between southern Nepal and Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, is an ideal environment for traffickers to operate within. ​There has been a further spike in the trafficking of women and children since the devastating April 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

Each year an estimated 7,000-10,000 women and children are trafficked through Bihar, many ending up in de facto slavery in Bihar’s red-light zones. With nearly a quarter of those trafficked below the age of 16, the situation is particularly grave for children. Currently, the precedent for young girls in these communities is to follow their mothers into prostitution.

What we are doing to help

Together with local organization Tatvasi Samaj Nyas (TSN), Children on the Edge has established two education and skills training centres in two of Bihar’s most prominent red light areas. Cut off from society at large, the government will not run schools in the red-light areas, so these centres aim to provide training and care to some of India’s most vulnerable children. By offering basic education and information about their value and rights as children, the hope is that these children will explore alternative options to the sex trade.

Currently the main activity at the centres is a sewing skills programme which provides preparatory job training to 15 teenage girls at each site. The goal of this is to not only to equip young women with a skill with which they can support themselves, but also provide a practical means for them to leave the red-light area where they live.

Each student is provided with their own sewing machine, which will then belong to her upon completion of the programme. “Having a machine of their own to start a new life with, gives these girls so much more confidence,” says John Littleton, our Asia Regional Manager. “These young women would otherwise be unable to save the money needed to buy one, without resorting to loan sharks or prostitution. It’s a small gift that can make a huge difference in the trajectory of their lives.”

Without this type of training, the girls report that the overwhelming expectation upon them is to work in the sex trade by age 18 or sometimes younger. For this reason, the sewing skills programme provides a critical way out of prostitution for 30 women each year.

Conditions are cramped in the classrooms, yet the enthusiasm of the girls is clear to see. Lajuli aged 14, says, “I amhoping that these classes will give me a way to leave this community.” Her goal is to become a seamstress and sewing teacher in the nearby town of Prunea once her training is complete later this year. From there, she says, she can begin a new life outside of the brothel area.

Further, the programme offers non-formal education classes in subjects like math and literacy to over sixty school-aged children at two learning centres in the red-light areas. These centres are a place where children can leave behind the uncertainty of their surroundings and feel secure. Teachers are trained to work with the students to create a safe and caring environment where the children are free to express themselves.

For young Mehul, aged 10 years old, these classes are the only exposure to education he has ever received. His typical day is spent helping his father work the crops in a nearby field and care for his younger siblings. His favourite subject is maths, and he hopes that the skills he learns will prepare him to run his own shop someday.

Special effort is also made to emphasise the intrinsic value of each child, as migrants or members of the Dalit castes often feel scorned by the society around them. The aim of the programme is to educate them about their rights and help them engage with the world outside of the red-light district.

Our aim is to build the capacity of these Centres and link them with our partners in Patna for training, so they can strengthen their current small-scale education provision for children living in these communities. The Centres will develop their teaching, enabling students to receive lessons in reading, writing, maths, and hygiene, alongside creative activities important for helping them cope with their difficult surroundings. We would also like to build up more resources for the sewing programme.

On one of the hottest days of the year so far, our four amazing runners absolutely excelled themselves and took on a challenge to remember in the sunny seaside city of Brighton.

For Kelly, Sarah and Paul, it was their first ever marathon, and all three completed it in hugely respectable times. And even more respectable were their fundraising totals. At the latest count, Kelly has raised £1414, Paul on £1200 and Sarah at £1181 – an absolutely incredible total between them.

Andrew, a veteran runner, who volunteers with our Chichester Half Marathon team took on the marathon, despite just recovering from an injury; all to raise funds for our work with vulnerable children overseas. In just a few weeks, he raised a great £435, also an amazing effort.

Raising £4320 in between them; this sum will help us to do so much to help vulnerable children overseas. For example, £4320 is enough to cover the costs of running one of our tent schools for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon for 100 children, for 43 days.

Paul said that the best thing about the challenge was knowing he was helping to change the lives of individuals he’ll never meet on the other side of globe. After completing the Birmingham Half Marathon in November last year, he wanted to take on a new challenge now he had some time to commit to the tough training regime required for a marathon. A personal trainer by trade and as well as a talented martial arts competitor, he found that training with his clients broke up the monotony of the long hours of training runs during the winter months. Paul’s not been put off doing another marathon either, he said “after my positive experience with the children on the Edge charity and the Brighton Marathon I am considering the Edinburgh Marathon 2017 at the end of May so watch this space!”

Sarah - the fastest of all our runners – said: “As awful as I felt during the run, I had access to doctors, I was able to get myself food and drink to recover, I got home to a warm bath and a bed to sleep in. When I think of those I set out to help, it makes my struggles on race day feel small but my sense of achievement feels great”. She said that starting the marathon knowing that she had hit her fundraising target was really motivating and along the appreciated the 'amazing' atmosphere and the level of support from the crowds. When asked what the hardest part of the challenge was; Sarah said it was all her training during the cold, dark months whilst juggling work and family life. Sarah even had to do a three hour training run in hurricane Doris!

Andrew told us that having secured a place at the Brighton Marathon last year, he didn’t want to miss an opportunity to raise funds for Children on the Edge. He’s volunteered for us for the past year, helping with the Chichester Half Marathon event. Despite being a veteran runner, he said that raising money to help the vulnerable children we work with gave him a focus and a reason to keep going during the marathon itself. What’s next for Andrew? He’s considering an ultra-marathon!

For Kelly, she wanted to take on the marathon to tick it off her bucket list. She also said that she wanted to run her first marathon for an organisation she knew and trusted, rather than just applying for another charity place. Knowing about our work - having volunteered on some of our projects in Romania and East Timor, and whilst working for us in Indonesia many years ago – meant that she has a real understanding of what Children on the Edge does. She said that the best thing about her challenge was that she raised a lot more money that she had hoped; which has a big impact for a small charity like us. The worst thing for Kelly, was the 21 degree heat on the day itself (it was a very hot April 9th for all the runners!).

We’re so proud and inspired by all our Brighton Marathon runners this year. They’ve done an incredible job of fundraising for Children on the Edge, as well as completing the marathon itself. Their efforts will make such a huge difference to our work.

Since June 2011 the Myanmar (Burma) central government has been in open conflict with the Kachin Independence Army following a failure in peace talks to resolve their longstanding conflict. While this conflict dates back decades, the past six years have seen consistent fighting, displacing more than 120,000 people across Northern Myanmar.

In 2012 we heard first-hand accounts of those fleeing the conflict, who spoke of brutal violence, ongoing atrocities and severe violations of human rights including the wide-spread burning of villages, rape, maiming and executions.

Now the government appears determined to crush this last remaining pocket of wide-spread armed resistance in Myanmar and their tactics have been increasingly harsh. In October, with significant natural resources and political influence at stake, they began to use jets, helicopters and shelling to attack civilians in the camps where we work.

Zai Awng was one of the camps hit the hardest, with 3,000 displaced Kachin people living up in the mountains on the China border, taking refuge there since 2012. The October air attacks drove them out of the camp and over the border into China where they were badly beaten by authorities. Forced to turn back to Myanmar, they hid in the jungle until the troops withdrew. They returned to Zai Awng but in November the shelling resumed and they had no option but to flee again, hiding in a different part in China, then taking a different route back over the border.

Any people who attempted within that month to return to the old camp disappeared, so the 2,000 people that remained built a new camp, closer to Laiza, called Sha It Yang. The terrified community are hoping this location could be safer, but are traumatised by their experience and livng with the knowledge that if they are attacked again, there is nowhere to run to. The conditions here are appalling, with thousands of people living under tarpaulin and only one road in or out. Food supplies are scant and the water is unsanitary, especially after rain, which saturates the area causing many problems.

Three teachers from our Centre in the original camp have remained with the community and worked to re-build a safe space for children. They have set up two classes but there is need for another four. Children are in desperate need of support after what they have been through, with teachers reporting that the even Chinese New Year firecrackers heard across the border are now terrifying for them. One teacher said, “We are doing the best we can, but naturally the children are quieter, less active and less able to be engaged and creative. The wider community is so tired of the fighting, they just want to go home, and they don’t understand why the world isn’t paying attention”.

In the northern camps of Kachin state there is not a single other international organisation offering ongoing support to children. As the area remains an active war zone, access to the camps is difficult. Aid agencies sporadically operate in the central government controlled regions of Kachin State, but leave when the operating environment becomes too difficult.

​Please share about this situation where you can, to direct attention to a beleaguered and terrified group of civilians, who are in need of critical help yet currently forgotten by the international community.

Children on the Edge generate hope, life, colour and fun in the lives of some of the most vulnerable children across the world. Hope is a fundamental part of this because it enables people to know that things can be different. In turn, this is a catalyst for action within the communities where we work.

Living on the edges of society, surviving life in refugee camps and slums, enduring persecution or isolation are all situations that can breed despair and inertia. Sometimes when people see no evidence that things can change, they stop wasting energy believing their situation can be different. Rebecca Solnit describes hope as an axe, rather than a lottery ticket, and says ‘To hope is to give yourself a future, and that commitment to the future makes the present uninhabitable’.

In his 1930s ‘Treatise on Hope’, Ernst Bloch says that hope requires people to ‘throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong’. To us, this speaks very strongly of the importance of hope in sparking community ownership, participation and action. Hope gets people on their feet and inspires them to become actively involved in creating change, instead of resigning themselves to the difficult circumstances they are living through.​​We have seen this scenario many times in the situations we work, and it’s why generating hope is one of the core elements we focus on. We encourage it through our relational approach, and it is the key to community ownership in our projects. Here are two examples:

In Lebanon, when our partners started working with Syrian refugees in the informal settlements in Bekaa Valley, many people they met had given up.

Project Director Nuna Matar described how “Often groups of people would be sitting around doing very little, they didn’t see what they could do to change anything. Big organisations would come and count people rather than talk to them, leave resources that they didn’t need, like electric heaters when they have no electricity. Refugees want to be known as people, not numbers! This doesn’t build hope, they started to sit there powerlessly, wondering what would be dropped off next”.

When our partners started to talk to people about education for their children, some of the men said ‘Are you going to build us a school?’, so the team put the question back to them. ‘Are you going to build a school?’. After a long time of believing nothing could change, they had lost motivation, but the team here built relationships with them, encouraged them and worked alongside them. ​The fathers became instrumental in the construction of schools, and later on even the building of a new refugee camp. The women are fully involved in the education programme, many being trained as teachers and instigating their own literacy classes. The children have been engaged in designing the camp, they especially liked helping out with building the play area! We are now supporting the education of 500 Syrian refugee children, whose aspirations are rising, as are those of their community.

One year ago in Uganda, when we visited Loco slum the people there said they had no hope. Unemployment and income poverty here has left households vulnerable and their children are prone to exploitation, malnutrition, physical and sexual abuse. The Chairman of our Child Protection Team (CPT) in Loco, said “People here have had many organisations come and start things and then go, promise things and then disappoint, they didn’t believe things could change”.

Using the CPT model means that work here is totally owned by the community. Babra is a social worker for COTE Africa, she describes how “ The community participate from the start. They identify the problems, they identify the solutions”.

Ten local people are trained up to work in their area as part of the CPT, to educate people about child protection and support them to create a protective environment. These people are volunteers, and all the work they do is out of dedication to their community. As the people they work with start to see that things can change, it encourages them to take more action.

These are just two examples of how hope brings action in our work, but if you visited any one of our projects you would see the same values. Thank you for your support in generating hope and bringing change in the lives of children living on the edge. ​

When we say we bring hope, life, colour and fun to the lives of vulnerable children, it’s 'hope' that kicks off the list, and with good reason. Hope is the cornerstone of what we believe is vital for children living in desperate situations, because it’s all about change.

Hope could be seen as a fluffy, sentimental term; something to inspire a kind of 'sunshiny' feeling about helping children, but we think it’s the opposite.

Children that live in the situations where we are working don’t need something fluffy, they need something revolutionary. These are children facing war, persecution, poverty and injustice and in the current political climate, the need is not abating. Nationalism is on the rise, compassion is fatigued and barriers are growing.

In her book, ‘Hope in the Darkness’, Rebecca Solnit says that ‘Hope is an act of defiance… the alternative is surrender, which abandons not only the future, but the soul’. At present, our work with children living on the edges of their societies is more vital than ever, and it works in defiance of the status quo that marginalises children on the basis of their race, caste, class or ethnic minority.

In October an 65, 000 Rohingya refugees fled horrific human rights abuses in Myanmar, joining the masses of refugees already in Bangladesh, who have been fleeing government persecution for over a decade. It’s here we are providing education for 2,700 Rohingya children in a makeshift refugee camp.

Late last year, an 8 year old Dalit girl in Bihar State, India was beaten by a group of men when she dared to say that she could be a magistrate or the chief of police one day. It’s here that we are supporting education and non-violent activism to tackle ingrained caste discrimination and help ‘untouchable’ children realise their rights.

Currently, the practice of child sacrifice in Uganda is still going unreported and there are gaps in legislation enabling perpetrators to go free. It is here that we are working with a Ugandan child rights group, and the government to address the problem, whilst expanding our child protection teams in communities.

In the kind of work we do - supporting children in the some of the most vulnerable situations across the world - there are many benefits to being a small organisation. Here, we talk about five reasons why small is beautiful…

1. We can work under the radar

Being small has enabled us to access situations that larger organisations cannot, due to their size and the corresponding limitations and bureaucracy. For example, for the last five years we have been the only organisation providing education in safe spaces to Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar in the largest makeshift camp in Bangladesh and we attribute this in part, to our compact size.

2. We’re agile

Our size enables us to have the flexibility to meet needs in a targeted way, as they arise, quickly and in a relational manner. If our partners are faced with a sudden flood, refugee crisis, increased air raids or arrests, then we can respond immediately, garnering support or adapting the programme accordingly to continue to meet the needs of the children we work with.

3. We’re streamlined

We don’t rely on large and costly international staff offices in the countries we work in. Instead, we focus on building strong relationships with our local partners who have a thorough understanding of the situation on the ground and a depth of relationship with their communities.

4. We’re focussed

Having a small number of projects means we can focus on delivering work of the highest quality. Larger organisations have a higher capacity, but deal very much in 'broad brush strokes', where as we have the ability to fine tune and ensure that each child is valued as an individual.

5. We keep you connected

Our small size means that our donors and supporters can have a greater connection and ownership with the work they are investing in. Your money doesn’t go into a huge machine, but to a small (but perfectly formed!) group of projects which you are updated on regularly, seeing tangibly and specifically the ongoing progress that you are making possible. ​